Kerry Beal

How about start with a jaggery pudding (wattilappam) recipe and add your chilis to that.

I can probably bring along a couple of melters. I'm a little hesitant to bring the guitar across the border though. While we are on the topic of what needs bringing along - I have a few infrared thermometers from Canadian Tire that were about $40 and I have the all stainless dipping forks if anyone needs one.

Oh good - was hoping John was coming!

If your chocolate is warm you can usually add the coconut oil still solid - the heat from the chocolate will melt the coconut oil. The whole mixture then needs to be tempered - I believe that Greweling has you do it on a slab - but it becomes quite liquid and that can be challenging - so try doing it in a bowl over another bowl of cold water. You can get glucose made from tapioca - I don't begin to know if that would be kosher however.

The chocolate does help somewhat with transparency - but it's still a small amount relative to cocoa butter. I think you'll have to play with the amount of titanium dioxide.

Green has not been a success. These colours are pretty much transparent (except white) - you need to add titanium dioxide to get opacity.

So I had my first rotten egg in almost forever today. Was steaming half a dozen eggs in the thermomix for hard boiled eggs when a little explosion happened about 10 minutes in. Didn't think anything of it until 'eau de abscess' started to waft through the kitchen. Fished it out, took it out back and threw it in the ravine. It did have some interesting colours associated.

Welcome fandi1 - I for one would love to see your paint booth. I think perhaps your cocoa butter is a bit warm - try about 95 F and see if that makes a difference.

I suspect you are correct - as Jacques is kind of liked around here too!

If I'm not mistaken a vapour trap in line with the vane pump would involve liquid nitrogen or other very cold system to precipitate out the water so it won't contaminate the pump. I suspect that's not practical for a home based system. I'm still in search of a cheap scroll pump to replace my vane pump.

Noticed how many cars were parked outside the Forty Creek Distillery on my way to work today - knew it was getting closer to spring. Last time I stopped in I was the only person in there!

Was there not a thread on something similar earlier last year? Here we are. As mentioned above by fsiu (welcome by the way) - the Palate.

I second the excitement about getting Mark. He is such an amazing font of knowledge.

Who says beggars can't be choosers?

Another darn! Was looking forward to seeing you again.

The british version of the Aero bar lists vegetable fat.

Glad to see you back Andie - can't wait to see what you get up to in the kitchen once you are fully recovered. What's the first thing you want to cook for yourself?

The Matt's? Sounding vaguely familiar. It was cereal milk in the centre wasn't it?

A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from a young man who was trying to make these Banana Bonbons from Chefsteps. So essentially it's a frozen sphere that you then dip into cocoa butter then into chocolate. When the frozen sphere melts you are left with a liquid centre in a firm coating. He wanted to use caramelized white chocolate which was giving him some problems due to the viscosity and also finding that the chocolate (which is to be heated to 55º C) was melting the inner cocoa butter layer. Gotta love a challenge! I suggested he consider using Dulcey (valhrona's caramelized white chocolate) - but a quick check with the supplier revealed that it was $115 for 3 kg! So I set out to make my own. Worked out very nicely! So he showed up today to get some chocolate and so we could play with the spheres. I froze some spheres of rooibos Provence tea with a bit of honey. Had the melted cocoa butter at about 24 C and the chocolate at 32 or so. About half way through we tempered the chocolate - and found that those spheres were even a little more satisfactory - but not totally necessary. Rolled a couple of them in cocoa butter and freeze dried dulce de leche. Really neat - so you have a liquid centre surrounded by this wonderfully sweet caramelized white chocolate.

It was indeed the labneh, olive oil on top - the only hummus we had was in two small cups on the grilled meat plates - there was also garlic sauce on the mixed grill.

Hard to take a picture when she's laughing so hard the flask keeps moving up and down!

Cold inside, hot outside? Ah wait - you probably can't get inside. Which part is jammed?

House of Cans looks like a good place to start.

Adding some higher proof alcohol should dissolve the precipitated essential oils.

Yup - you can leave it out as Jim says - but I've been really delighted with the texture of some of Wybauw's fillings I've made with it.